1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for tire rolling simulation capable of predicting by numerical analysis method the performance of tires rolling on road-surface matter such as snow, mud, or soil which are to be hardened by compression.
2. Background Art
Conventionally, tires have been developed by the procedure of prototype manufacturing, experiment actually, and improved product manufacturing based on the results of the experiments. This approach, however, is inefficient because the prototype manufacturing and experiments demand a lot of cost and time. To solve this drawback, computer simulation with numerical analysis method, such as finite element method, have been suggested. This approach enables the prediction of tire performance without prototyping tires.
However, the conventional simulation only involve rolling tires on dry or wet asphalt roads, and not on snowy roads. In numerical analysis, water is treated as an uncompressible fluid which does not change its volume with increasing pressure. Snow, on the other hand, should be treated as a compressible material which causes a volume change by compression and continues the volume changing. Therefore, the conventional approaches fail to perform accurately the tire rolling simulation on the snowy roads.